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Washington Brief

The White House’s suggestions for cutting environmental programs could face bipartisan pushback, as both Democratic and Republican congressional districts received billions of dollars in combined contracts for environmental projects. (Bloomberg News)

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the administration is “not considering a carbon tax,” pushing back on a longshot attempt by officials with former Republican administrations to get President Donald Trump on board with a conservative-oriented policy to address climate change. (Axios)

A Government Accountability Office report detailed problems with communication within the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which Rep. Blake Fahrenthold (R-Texas) described as “distrust” between BSEE headquarters and its regional employees. (The Hill)

Business Brief

Last year saw a 48 percent drop in plans for new coal-fired power plans worldwide, and a 62 percent drop in the start of new construction, according to a report by environmental groups Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and CoalSwarm. (BBC News)

Most of the world’s cars will be powered by gasoline for the next two decades, continuing to drive demand for oil regardless of a surge in electric vehicles, according to Facts Global Energy. (Financial Times)

British electricity supplier Good Energy reached a deal to buy 12 percent of the electricity generated from Dong Energy’s offshore wind farm in Britain for one year. (Reuters)

More than half of the components in the smart phones, tablets and laptops that connect us start with petrochemicals. Beyond making the fuels that power the world, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers provide the building-blocks for high-tech innovations that make our modern lifestyles possible. Learn about how American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers are making our lives easier, healthier, safer and more productive at afpm.org. At AFPM, we make progress.

General

President Donald Trump’s cuts to environmental programs may face resistance from members of his own party due to an Obama administration practice that spread billions of dollars in contracts to Republican as well as Democratic congressional districts. A Bloomberg analysis of federal contract data shows that spending related to the environment reached 423 congressional districts in fiscal year 2016 and totaled $5.9 billion.

President Trump is poised in the coming days to announce his plans to dismantle the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy, while also gutting several smaller but significant policies aimed at curbing global warming. The moves are intended to send an unmistakable signal to the nation and the world that Mr. Trump intends to follow through on his campaign vows to rip apart every element of what the president has called Mr. Obama’s “stupid” policies to address climate change.

Proponents of the federal Energy Star program for energy efficient appliances are promising President Trump a fight if he maintains his deep cuts to the program in his final budget in May. “This is a destructive proposal that walks away from decades of bipartisan support for energy efficiency going back to the Reagan administration and beyond,” said Kateri Callahan, the president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a group that advocates for policies to boost efficiency.

A environmental group has launched a six-figure ad campaign against proposed budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). An ad from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) says cutting the agency’s budget will lead to “more asthma attacks, more lead in drinking water, more health problems, more pollution.”

The Senate voted Tuesday to abolish a rule restricting specific hunting practices on national wildlife refuges in Alaska — including trapping, baiting and aerial shooting — on the grounds that state officials should be able to set the terms for wildlife conservation on public land within their own borders. The 52-to-47 vote, which was almost entirely along party lines, represented the latest instance of Republicans using a powerful legislative tool — the Congressional Review Act — to eliminate regulations that Barack Obama’s administration finalized before he left office in January.

Equities dropped across the globe as investors began to question the U.S. president’s ability to enact his pro-growth policies, casting doubt on the so-called reflation trade. Safe-haven assets advanced.

Oil and Natural Gas

A watchdog is alleging numerous problems at the federal government’s offshore drilling regulator, including in its inspection and environmental stewardship programs. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is the latest on the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) from Congress’s watchdog, which previously identified problems ranging from revenue collection to employee retention and organizational restructuring.

Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp., are jumping into American shale with gusto, planning to spend a combined $10 billion this year, up from next to nothing only a few years ago. The giants are gaining a foothold in West Texas with such projects as Bongo 76-43, a well which is being drilled 10,000 feet beneath the table-flat, sage-scented desert, and which then extends horizontally for a mile, blasting through rock to capture light crude from the sprawling Permian Basin.

The popular claim that a surge in electric cars will hasten the arrival of peak oil demand is undermined by the data. The majority of the world’s cars will remain powered by petrol, also commonly known as gasoline, for at least the next two decades and this will drive oil demand, according to data from Facts Global Energy.

Saudi Aramco is set to launch its first public bond sale, of around $2bn, as soon as this month, as it begins to tap local currency debt markets as part of a $10bn fundraising programme. People briefed on the company’s plans say the world’s largest energy company is expected to receive approval from Saudi Arabia’s capital markets authority this week to sell Islamic bonds, known as sukuk.

Gas Natural will on Wednesday file a €1bn legal complaint against Colombia with an international arbitration panel in response to the seizure of the Spanish utility’s power supply business by Bogotá. According to people briefed on the filing, the complaint will assert that the actions by the Colombian government in relation to Electricaribe amount to an expropriation.

The San Patricio County, Texas, Commissioners Court voted twice in favor of what would be the world’s largest ethane steam cracker — first approving a reinvestment zone for the land and then tax abatements. The project is a joint venture by Exxon Mobil and Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corp., or SABIC, which want to bring the multibillion project to the Gulf Coast. The companies are also considering sites in Victoria and Louisiana.

Utilities and Infrastructure

Clean energy groups won a victory last week after Minnesota regulators approved a long-range plan by Otter Tail Power Company that will double its investment in wind power and close a coal plant within the next five years. Otter Tail’s updated 15-year “integrated resource plan” included suggestions from the groups Fresh Energy (which publishes Midwest Energy News), Wind on the Wires, Minnesota Center For Environmental Advocacy and Sierra Club.

Buy a battery to store solar and never pay for electricity again. That’s the bold proposition of sonnenFlat, the latest twist in an evolving virtual power plant model that developers hope will make home storage pay. Sonnen believes the cost of providing distributed power in Australia should be offset by the income generated by ancillary services the company sells to the grid operator, leveraging the combined storage capacity of its customers’ battery units.

Renewables

British green energy supplier Good Energy (GOODG.L), one of the small players snapping up market share from big providers, said it had signed a one-year deal to buy electricity from a Dong Energy (DENERG.CO) wind farm off the Yorkshire coast. Good Energy, which also announced a near 40 percent jump in core profit for last year, said it will buy 12 percent of the electricity produced by Dong Energy’s 210-megawatt (MW) Westermost Rough wind farm, with a view to expanding the deal in terms of length and volume.

A renewable energy company again faced opposition from landowners Monday as it tried for the second time to win one of the final pieces of regulatory approval needed to carry wind power east from the nation’s heartland over one of the country’s longest transmission lines. Missouri utility regulators began hearing testimony on a request from Clean Line Energy to build a high-voltage transmission line from western Kansas across Missouri and Illinois to an Indiana power grid that connects with Eastern states.

A broad coalition of solar power businesses, environmental advocates and industrial energy users want state regulators to reconsider new rules for solar power adopted earlier this year. But the move may just be a prelude to litigation — or legislative action.

Dominion Resources Inc. announced Monday that it will build two solar-generating facilities in South Carolina that will be operated under long-term power-purchase agreements with South Carolina Electric and Gas. Both projects were purchased from developer Adger Solar in November.

Coal

Twenty-sixteen saw a “dramatic” decline in the number of coal-fired power stations in pre-construction globally. The authors of a new study say there was a 48% fall in planned coal units, with a 62% drop in construction starts.

New Hope Group managing ­director Shane Stephan says the outlook for thermal coal used in power stations should be ­bolstered in coming years as ­Indonesia, the world’s biggest exporter, considers domestic coal reservation. Mr Stephan said it would be “stupid” for Australia, which has squandered its cheap, secure ­energy advantage, not to ­investigate high-efficiency, low-emission coal plants to provide that nation with affordable, ­reliable power.

Nuclear

A United Nations committee has asked the UK to suspend work on the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, pending assessment of the environmental impact. EDF, the French state-controlled utility firm, won approval to build an £18bn nuclear plant on England’s western coast in September.

Climate

A few hours after White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave an ambiguous answer about whether the administration is considering a carbon tax, the White House took it off the table. Former Secretary of State and the Treasury James Baker and other backers had pushed the idea in a meeting with senior White House officials early last month.

The day that President Trump’s climate science-slashing budget landed last week, his government held a public meeting here to prepare the nation’s Southeast region for rising seas, wildfires, extreme downpours and other impacts of climate change. Despite White House budget director Mick Mulvaney’s assertion Friday that studying climate change is a “waste of your money,” federal scientists are required, by a 1990 law, to do just that — and are carrying on for now, even under the cloud of budgetary uncertainty created by the Trump administration.

Extreme weather events triggered by a warming globe are pushing the Earth into “truly uncharted territory,” the United Nations’ weather agency said on Tuesday. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its annual repot on extreme weather events on Tuesday, saying the prevalence of climate-related weather issues last year “made history” and has continued into 2017.

Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives

Solar energy has become big business. Over the past decade it has plummeted in cost, surged in volume, and, as booming industries do, benefited some investors and burned others.

A Message from American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers:

By 2020, an estimated 18 billion devices will be wirelessly linked together by the “Internet of Things,” a world made possible by petrochemicals and powered by fuels provided by American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers. Learn about how American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers are making our lives easier, healthier, safer and more productive at afpm.org. At AFPM, we make progress.

If the nuclear industry once stood at the forefront of energy innovation, it is today rapidly losing ground. Global nuclear generation has fallen 9% since its peak in 2006, with closures outpacing new builds in many developed economies, and fossil fuels still cheaper and faster to deploy across the developing world.